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You are here: Home / Election Year / Friday Night Fights Open Thread: Embracing Joe Rogan

Friday Night Fights Open Thread: Embracing Joe Rogan

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Joe Rogan is a “stand-up comedian, mixed martial arts color commentator, podcast host”, and former host of Fear Factor. (AFAICT, like a copy of a copy of a copy of Howard Stern, only with less talent.) He’s notorious, among those who’ve ever heard of him, for being a professional jerk.

Those of us who are not sympathetic to Bernie Sanders’ political tactics will not be shocked that he’s endorsed Bernie. Nor is it a surprise that the staffers running Bernie’s twitter account think this is the Endorsement of the Week, under the philosophy of YOU CAN’T TELL *ME* WHAT TO DO, MOM!!!

And I guess by those rules, getting the Human Rights Campaign to say Sanders should reject Rogan’s endorsement is probably a win…

Reader Interactions

206Comments

  1. 1.

    Adam L Silverman

    Someone dropped a huge amount of oppo on him with The Daily Beast this week. Give the article a read, it is incredibly tone deaf. It also shows that there’s only one note that Senator Sanders can play regardless of what the sheet music calls for.

  2. 2.

    David 🎅🎄Merry Christmas🎄🎅 Koch

    Rogan is a Apollo 11 truther.  Wilmer went on his show and promised him he would release any information showing the Moon landing was faked.

  6. 6.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Jay: I’m tracking on it and not surprised one bit at all about the reporting. The virtual offices this guy is renting for his “security contracting” firm in DC and NY are expensive. Combine that with his land purchases in Washington state for a training site, that there is no way he’s a legit nat-sec type based on the bio he put on his company website, and the reporting that he attended a Russian security conference, and you have to ask where his money/funding is coming from? And I’ve got a pretty good guess what that source is.

  7. 7.

    Kent

    Is it normal that I’m a reasonably well educated and widely read  person and I have no fucking idea who Joe Rogan is?

  8. 8.

    Adam L Silverman

    @David 🎅🎄Merry Christmas🎄🎅 Koch: He has a massive blindspot and baggage. His entire premise is also based on an assumption not borne out by the data: that Americans are far farther to the left than is believed and are just waiting for the chance to rise up and participate in a political, economic, and social revolution. They aren’t. The question is whether any of this will be deployed as oppo in enough time to derail him or whether he is able to eke out the nomination because of too many candidates in the primary hanging on for too long. If it is the former, then you can expect significant numbers of his supporters will either switch to the President, vote for a third party/write Sanders in, or stay home as they did in 2016. The red in the chart below is “no” and the dark blue is “depends on the nominee”. These #s are even larger than what Sanders voters actually did in 2016, when 26% of them combined voted for the President instead of HRC, voted for Stein or Johnson instead of HRC, or stayed home and didn’t vote.

    It if is the latter, the President is going to bury him in oppo. As will the Russians. Sanders honeymooned in Soviet Moscow, do you really want to see the surveillance footage that Soviet Intelligence captured during his honeymoon?

  9. 9.

    Citizen Alan

    The saddest thing about the decline of Joe Rogan is that he was once part of the cast of NewsRadio, one of the best ensemble sitcoms ever. And he went from that to Fear Factor … and then to the Man Show in its post Jimmy Kimmel era … and now to this, whatever the hell this is.

  10. 10.

    Jay

    @Kent:

    nope. He was a has been by his late 30’s, and like Lobster Boy or Stephan has made money off the Intertubes subset of Man childs, Incels, MRA’s and Terfs.

    He had a career as a comic, a host of The Man Show and News Radio as a stereotype, but got way too “in character” for his career.

  11. 11.

    David 🎅🎄Merry Christmas🎄🎅 Koch

    @Kent: He used to host a gross reality tee vee show called “Fear Factor” where desperate people would compete to drink the most donkey sperm and eat the most leeches (citation) (not for the faint of heart).

  12. 12.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Kent: No. It means you aren’t alt-light or alt-right curious, as well as not being an edgelord and/or shitbird.

  13. 13.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    You watch Rogan’s you tube channel, he will never vote Democrat.

    Full discloser, some of Rogan’s martial arts stuff is interesting, but when he opened his mouth on politics there is only so much ignorance I will tolerate.

  15. 15.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Adam L Silverman: Meanwhile, the state he represents in the Senate has a Republican governor. He hasn’t even shown it can be done IN THE FRIENDLIEST POSSIBLE STATE FOR HIS SUPPOSED STRATEGY. The whole thing is unfathomably idiotic.

  16. 16.

    Kent

    So being endorsed by Joe Rogan is essentially the same as being endorsed by early Apprentice years Trump?

  18. 18.

    JaySinWA

    It is interesting to see the Never Trumper’s and “independent” maybe-former Republicans response to the outcry against Rogan. “Democrats don’t want to win, they want purity tests”. No Sister Souljah moment reflections

    ETA not that Bernie would do that, but if he did it could be good for him. OTOH Rogan isn’t black, so maybe not.

  19. 19.

    Mnemosyne

    I’ve been following the whole kerfuffle on Twitter and enjoying the heartburn WAY too much.

    Turns out that when you insist that your stances are always consistent, people assume that your stance that we need to kick out the “centrists” like Biden to make room for the assholes like Rogan is how you’re planning to govern, and a whole lot of people don’t like that idea one bit.

  20. 20.

    David 🎅🎄Merry Christmas🎄🎅 Koch

    What rough beast, its hour come round at last,
    Slouches towards Bethlehem Reality Tee Vee to be born?

  21. 21.

    Mnemosyne

    @JaySinWA:

    It’s especially funny since the Berners are ALL ABOUT purity tests until they end up on the pointy end of the stick, whereupon they discover that purity tests are unfair and reductive … but only when applied to THEM. They still want to be allowed to demand purity from everyone else.

    Too bad, so sad, go eat some worms, losers.

  22. 22.

    ruemara

    @Kent: Yes.

     

    I liked Rogan on News Radio. Then he turned out to be an utter douche around Fear Factor. Finding out he’s a greaseball, incel incubating libertarian alt-right host garbage bin was sad. Watching the Sanders 2020 team waddle into that garbage, roll in it and then claim it’s a perfumed wash – fucking priceless.

     

    And utterly painful to watch “progressives” equate working with slavery and claim that isn’t it good we can bring in some nazis to the big tent that we just had AOC say was too big because Biden was in it? Also, fucking EZRA KLEIN.

    Fuck. Untrustworthy bastards

     

    @Adam L Silverman: I’ve already seen young old Bernie in his underwear singing in Russian, I believe. I didn’t want to listen long enough to grok the lang because my fucking eyes.

  25. 25.

    Major Major Major Major

    Tribal signaling for the dirtbag left. Surprising for the timing more than anything else. But as recent events have shown, the campaign has decided to begin executing their divide-and-conquer plan.

  27. 27.

    Mnemosyne

    @Major Major Major Major:

    I agree that this was their plan, but they seem to have started executing it WAY too early. Did someone panic based on early polls, or is it just the natural result of a campaign in disarray where no one is really in control and everyone wants to impress the boss? 🤔

  28. 28.

    Jay

    When the lawsuit was filed in March of 2017, the families celebrated it as a triumph. President Obama had vetoed legislation that allowed the suit to proceed, citing international law obligations, but the Republican-­led Congress overrode his veto. Since then, however, the suit has moved slowly. At this hearing, the two sides parried over how many Saudi officials and other witnesses the plaintiffs would be allowed to question during the deposition phase. One of the Saudi government’s lawyers, Gregory G. Rapawy, argued for sharply restricting the number, saying the plaintiffs had “not produced any evidence to support the allegations that Mr. al-Bayoumi and Mr. al-Thumairy acted at the direction of senior Saudi government officials in assisting the hijackers.”

    https://www.propublica.org/article/9-11-investigation-saudi-connections-operation-encore-fbi/amp

  29. 29.

    Eljai

    @Jay:  But a lot of the PUMAs weren’t actually Democrats in the first place. According to exit polls, of the percentage that switched from Clinton to McCain, about 3/4 said they identified as Independent or Republican.

  33. 33.

    David 🎅🎄Merry Christmas🎄🎅 Koch

    @Mnemosyne:  Right after New Year’s day he started to personally trash Biden.  You don’t do that unless internal polls show you losing.

  37. 37.

    Mnemosyne

    @Major Major Major Major:

    I mean, I’m getting a sense of panic now that they realize that it’s backfiring, but you’re probably right that this was a deliberate rollout.

    I disagree that this was the right time to unveil Rogan, though. I suppose we’ll see if he actually has a surge in Iowa and New Hampshire.

  38. 38.

    mrmoshpotato

    I Can No Longer Rationally Discuss The Sanders Campaign

    Glad to see this has been a category since 2016.

    Also, Zergnet is still trash.

  39. 39.

    Mnemosyne

    @anarchoRex:

    Oh, we all know what wage slavery is. We just disagree that having a low-wage job is equally as bad as being a literal piece of property who can be whipped, beaten, or murdered with impunity and whose children can be yanked away and sold on a whim.

  40. 40.

    PJ

    @anarchoRex: if you can’t tell the difference between a bad job with terrible conditions and low pay, and being owned outright, free to be tortured, raped, and murdered, separated from your loved ones forever at the whim of a despot, I don’t know what to say, but I hope Bernie’s campaign makes an ad celebrating your endorsement of him.

  42. 42.

    Formerly disgruntled in Oregon

    @anarchoRex:

    Wage slavery

    Try actual slavery, followed by decades of lynchings and terrorism?

    White folks like me (and maybe you) should probably avoid using variants of the word “slavery” to describe the experiences of people who aren’t (or weren’t) literally fucking enslaved.

  43. 43.

    Mnemosyne

    @PJ:

    Come on, Frederick Douglass’s description of a slave market makes it sound exactly like filling out an application at McDonald’s, amirite? 🙄

    We were all ranked together at the valuation. Men and women, old and young, married and single, were ranked with horses, sheep, and swine. There were horses and men, cattle and women, pigs and children, all holding the same rank in the scale of being, and were all subjected to the same narrow examination. Silvery-headed age and sprightly youth, maids and matrons, had to undergo the same indelicate inspection. At this moment, I saw more clearly than ever the brutalizing effects of slavery upon both slave and slaveholder. (8.2)

  44. 44.

    Mnemosyne

    Also, too …

    It’s true that working conditions in the 19th century were brutal and appalling. Read about textile mills sometime and how the child workers would often lose fingers or limbs to the machines, if not their lives. Calling that kind of work “wage slavery” made some sort of sense for those times and those working conditions.

    That ain’t the world that 21st century Americans live in, and for some neckbearded asshole to bitch that his part-time job at Starbucks is “wage slavery” is gross and offensive.

  46. 46.

    gene108

    @Adam L Silverman:

    Bernie’s a guy, who fell in love with Communism or an ideal of what Communism promised, in the 1950’s or 1960’s, and believes that Communism cannot fail, it can only be failed.

  49. 49.

    gene108

    @Adam L Silverman:

    As will the Russians. Sanders honeymooned in Soviet Moscow,

    From what footage I have seen about his honeymoon and post-honeymoon return to the USA, he had nothing but praise for the USSR, and aspersions for the USA.

    He really is an unreconstructed communist wannabe.

  52. 52.

    anarchoRex

    So judging by these remarks, apparently y’all haven’t been introduced to the concept of wage slavery, which, no, is not that “having a job is the same as being in bondage”

    And before someone else throws Fredrick Douglas up here, maybe read his own words about this first:
    “…experience teaches us that there may be a slavery of wages only a little less galling and crushing in its effects than chattel slavery, and that this slavery of wages must go down with the other.”

  53. 53.

    Cacti

    I’m shocked, shocked I tell you that Bernie thinks the endorsement of a Z-list celebrity douche-bro is the greatest thing ever.

  54. 54.

    gene108

    @mrmoshpotato:

    Conservatives, at least, have massive well funded operations, which can help normalize their radicalism.

    Look at the TEA Party, in 2009 and how Fox News gave these middlingly attended protests wall-to-wall coverage, billionaires bankrolled those protests, and how it influenced the 2010 election.

  55. 55.

    The Dangerman

    Wait … Joe Rogan … the Joe Rogan whose previous claim to fame was smoking a joint with Elon Musk … THAT Joe Rogan?

    The value of anything related to Joe Rogan and $2 can’t get me a decent cup of coffee at McDonalds.

  56. 56.

    Sab

    @anarchoRex: Yeah, wage slavery sucks, but no one is selling your actual children, spouse or parents away. Wage slavery is serfdom. Slavery is slavery. They are different.

  59. 59.

    mrmoshpotato

    @gene108: I know that.  The Tea Party was as grass roots as claiming that you dug a meteor crater with your bare hands (or your bear hands).

  62. 62.

    🐾BillinGlendaleCA

    @Mnemosyne: Wage slavery was being paid in company script that could only be used to pay rent for your housing in the company town and purchase supplies at the company store.  Credit was available to cover the gap between your wages and the cost of housing and food that the company supplied.  You couldn’t leave the company until you paid off your loan from the company.  That is wage slavery.

  64. 64.

    Mnemosyne

    @🐾BillinGlendaleCA:

    Again, an appalling 19th century practice that doesn’t really have a parallel in the United States today. Nobody does company scrip anymore. People can strain to say that if they don’t have any say in their company deciding that they’re going to move out of state, that’s “wage slavery” just like living in a company town, but it pretty clearly is not.

    Unless, of course, you’re Bernie Sanders and you decided to make that exact comparison in a Vermont newspaper 30 years ago, and then all of your Bros swarm together on Twitter today to insist that their god-king is right and that’s TOTALLY wage slavery.

  65. 65.

    Mnemosyne

    @anarchoRex:

    Sorry that your imaginary Frederick Douglass doesn’t match the historical one, but someone who thinks that the wage slavery of 1871 has a direct parallel in 2020 America that affects millions of white people and is just as bad as chattel slavery was is a fucking moron.

  67. 67.

    anarchoRex

    @Mnemosyne: you, you don’t actually know what wage slavery, is do you? It’s a concept that’s been around since Cicero, it’s not whatever y’all feel like defining it as to bolster y’all’s weird grudge. Apparently, according to this comment section, wage slavery is only when jobs were like real tough and smelly, that’s when it was wage slavery, but now that we have OSHA it’s not wage slavery anymore!

  70. 70.

    anarchoRex

    @🐾BillinGlendaleCA: Bill, that’s not what wage slavery is. When people leave for “other opportunities” they’re leaving to go work for a wage somewhere else. It isn’t about being tied to a specific employer. It’s about being forced to sell the value of your labor, otherwise you will starve and die. If you can’t live without a wage, then you are a slave to it.

     

    Y’all are like some weird mirror of “don’t raise taxes on rich people, because I’ll be rich someday” except “I’m not a wage slave I totally get to choose where to work for a wage.”

  73. 73.

    anarchoRex

    @Sab: Well, let me clarify then. When I said “Always OK” I guess I misunderstood your “OK?”

    I just meant that we don’t always agree but I respect your responses and am always glad to see you on the comments. I hope I made that more clear?

  74. 74.

    David 🎅🎄Merry Christmas🎄🎅 Koch

    “For better or for worse, the Cuban revolution is a very profound and very deep revolution. Much deeper than I had understood.  More interesting than their providing their people with free health care, free education, free housing … is that they are in fact creating a very different value system than the one we are familiar with.”

    Bernie Sanders, 1989

     

    “There are some things that [the Soviet Union does] better than we do and which were, in fact, quite impressive. Subway systems in in Moscow costs 5 kopecs — or 7 cents. Faster, cleaner, more attractive and more efficient than any in the U.S. — and cheap.  The train trip that we took from Leningrad to Moscow — for Soviet citizens — was very cheap.”

    Bernie Sanders, 1988

    definitely electable.

  76. 76.

    Baud

    The Wikipedia entry on wage slavery provides an interesting history.  The debate about whether wages are like chattel slavery isn’t new. I personally don’t like the term.

  77. 77.

    Sab

    @Sab: I have a stepson in wage slavery. It sucks. However, he is not a slave,. He is in an unpleasant working environment.Been there, done that Awful, but you can move on.

    Can’t move on from your master selling your kids or your wife or your husband. Post Civil War everyone talked about black people looking for lost relatives.

    If you don’t finding this heartbreaking , you have no heart.

  79. 79.

    🐾BillinGlendaleCA

    @anarchoRex: Slavery is being tied to a specific “employer” for no wages(since the employer owns your labor) and the “employer” can transfer you to another “employer” without your consent.  Wage Slavery would be when you are being paid a wage, but are still tied to an employer.

  80. 80.

    pablo

    Howard Stern endorsed Hilary numerous times in 2016, and she never acknowledged it.  Until a month ago when she finally was a guest on his show.

  82. 82.

    anarchoRex

    @Sab: reparations would honestly be the least we could do for the descendants of victims of slavery. The sheer scale of the inhumanity honestly boggles the mind.

  87. 87.

    Jay

    @Mnemosyne:

    btDubs, the new “fun one” is:

    EI: were you fired, laid off or quit?

    Employee: well, they scheduled 0 hours for 4 months,

    EI, so, were you fired, laid off, or did you quit?

  91. 91.

    Cacti

    Wage slavery (noun) – a dumbass term, made up by dumbass white people, to minimize the suffering they inflicted on people of African ancestry, through forced labor under threat of violence or death.

  92. 92.

    Amir Khalid

    I have trouble recognising Joe Rogan these days. Back when he did Fear Factor, he had hair. Even then he was not a major TV personality, and certainly not political. His thing was making random people do scary things, like perform action-movie style stunts and eat durian. Why should anyone give a rat’s patootie whom he endorses for president?

  99. 99.

    David 🎅🎄Merry Christmas🎄🎅 Koch

    @anarchoRex: I didn’t say a single word about the Soviet Union or Cuba.   Not one word.   But your sensitivity on his comments proves he’s unelectable.   If what he said was innocuous you wouldn’t have felt the need to respond.

  106. 106.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Baud: (We’re going to hell for this.)

    I feel like my muscles enslave my bones!  They refuse to let my skeleton be free!

    ETA – Also, fuck Bernie.

  107. 107.

    Cacti

    @anarchoRex:

    You cult leader spent a half century fellating authoritarian communist regimes and strongmen dictators.

    A substantial majority of voters would choose herpes over Bernie Sanders.

  108. 108.

    anarchoRex

    @Baud: considering that his platform is pretty boilerplate social democracy “saving capitalism from itself” I’m sure we will be. But I’m not supporting him because he promised to abolish wage slavery so I’m not sure what your point is?

  110. 110.

    Mnemosyne

    @anarchoRex:

    They work for wages, which is just as bad as being a chattel slave who could be beaten or murdered by their master at any moment. Thanks for clearing that up

    I would say it’s ironic that you’re making this argument from a computer that was built by wage slaves that you paid for using your own wages, but I’m pretty sure that Mommy and Daddy paid for it and you don’t actually understand that you yourself are participating in the system.

  111. 111.

    anarchoRex

    @Mnemosyne: yes because our only two options are to go back to scratching a living out of the dirt, or continuing to enrich the likes of Jeff Bezos and the Koch brothers.

  114. 114.

    Baud

    @anarchoRex:

    You defended his comments by invoking wage slavery and then defended the concept of wage slavery by suggesting it was a bad thing that people work for income to pay for basic necessities.

  115. 115.

    Cacti

    How is it that a man who has never held a real job in 78 years of life can hold himself out as a working class hero?

  117. 117.

    Mnemosyne

    @🐾BillinGlendaleCA:

    To be fair, there are some people currently working who could be termed modern-day slaves, especially garment and domestic workers. They’re brought here, their passports are taken away, and they are basically imprisoned and forced to work until they pay off their “debt,” which magically grows larger the longer they’re here.

    But working for $12 an hour at Starbucks is equally as bad because it’s wage slavery, so … 🤷‍♀️

  119. 119.

    Mnemosyne

    @anarchoRex:

    Well, you can become a podcaster like Joe Rogan and say racist and sexist things for ad money, but that just puts you in the position of exploiting everyone around you. Why, what did you have in mind?

  120. 120.

    anarchoRex

    @Baud: yes, I support both of those points. your “will people not work in Bernie’s America” line is purely a projection of how you feel about those points, because neither Bernie nor I have ever stated that no one will have to work for anything if he wins.

  122. 122.

    Jay

    @Mnemosyne:

    depends on your experience.

    tomorrow, I start my shift at 6:00 am.

    finished at 11:00 pm today.

    All for $1.65 more an hour, that I earned 40 years ago.

  123. 123.

    Baud

    @anarchoRex: I’m not projecting anything. I’m trying to understand your argument about wage slavery. You seem to be saying all labor in exchange for compensation is a bad thing that is akin to chattel slavery.

  125. 125.

    Mnemosyne

    @Jay:

    I work in an industry where it’s not uncommon for people to be killed on the job, and that industry is film & television.

    Nobody is saying that working conditions couldn’t be better or that salaries couldn’t be higher. But anarchoRex is arguing that you shouldn’t have your job at all, because it’s mere wage slavery.

  129. 129.

    Mnemosyne

    @anarchoRex:

    No, my argument is that you have no experience of the real world so you can only argue theory.

    But, hey, good luck with that “avoiding wage slavery” thing. I’m sure your parents will let you keep living in their basement for as long as you want.

  135. 135.

    Mnemosyne

    @Jay:

    Actually, very few countries with universal healthcare systems have single payer systems. Germany is not a single payer system. Neither is Switzerland. Neither is Japan. Neither is South Korea. The list goes on.

    What’s holding us back from a universal healthcare system in the US is our government’s reluctance to regulate the insurance and healthcare industries as strictly as other countries do.

  138. 138.

    Yutsano

    • @Mnemosyne: In fact, the Netherlands moved from single payer to a highly regulated private insurance scheme. The Republicans love that example until you dog under the hood and look at how progressive it is next to the American system.
  139. 139.

    anarchoRex

    @Baud: ok, I apologise, I took that comment as being flippant and in bad faith. I will try to not be so quick to judge your comments.

    I’m not arguing compensation for labor is bad. The entire concept of wage slavery is about how being forced to sell your labor is exploitive. And it is. I don’t own land, factories, or capital, so that means if I don’t convince someone to let me enrich them, then I will die (barring the charity of others.) I don’t actually see all the fruits of my labor, most of it is enjoyed by my employer. That’s exploitive. In opposition to wage slavery, my position is pretty simple, it’s the classic “from each according to their ability, to each according to their need.” It would be pretty easy to imagine a world where all companies are employee ran and owned, and for those that can not or will not work, there is a robust welfare state that will provide for all their neccesities for survival. There is no wage slavery in this hypothetical system.

  141. 141.

    Jay

    @Mnemosyne:

    1:15th of my fellow employees will be dead next year.

    algorythmic software says when we should work.

    no humans involved.

    did you quit, were you laid off or were you fired?

    none of the above, they just havn’t given me any working hours for months,

    “Sorry, but employment insurance doesn’t apply.

  142. 142.

    Yutsano

    @anarchoRex: You…really have no idea how labour works do you? You can have a just compensation scheme in a capitalist system. Just look at Sweden. They’re as close to a socialist society as exists in the world and yet their economy is fundamentally capitalist. But the value of labour is respected.

  143. 143.

    Baud

    @anarchoRex: Thanks for trying to explain, but your explanation isn’t reaching me. I don’t see anything inherently “exploitative” about the system except where labor lacks sufficient bargaining power to meet minimum standards of living. And unlike  you, I have a great deal of difficulty imagining the world you describe as either being functional or less exploitative.

  144. 144.

    Jay

    @Mnemosyne:

    It’s part and parcel of ‘Merkins being stupid. There is no cure for that.

    I get medicare.  Breast implants cost more, but there is  a PPO for that.

  145. 145.

    Mnemosyne

    @anarchoRex:

    Awww, does the dude who reduced me to a cartoon think I was too simplistic in my retort?

    You may want to read “Animal Farm” for a cool allegory about what happened with Soviet collectivization.

  146. 146.

    Yutsano

    @Jay: Canadian single payer health care is great. It has saved the lives of millions of people in my homeland. Yet even Tommy Douglas had a few blind spots. Canadian Medicare doesn’t cover dental, vision, or physiotherapy. It is much better than the terribly expensive American system. But, like every other single payer health care system in the world, it does not cover everything.

  147. 147.

    anarchoRex

    @Yutsano: I mean Sweden is like 90% there, yeah. They have a robust welfare state, like I mentioned, and the workers there have a lot of say in how their companies are run, which isn’t quite employee-owned-and-ran, but it’s on the path. I don’t know why you’re citing a country that is a great (almost)example of exactly what I’m talking about, and that works really well! and then use it to try and prove that I’m being unrealistic?

    @Baud: worker owned companies perform better on average than the status quo, so that’s pretty easy to see working. And, Yutsano just helpfully pointed out a country that’s pretty damn close to what I’m talking about, so there’s really very little imagining that you have to do.

    Neat.

  149. 149.

    anarchoRex

    @Mnemosyne: so you got your feelings hurt by a cartoon that hit too close to home, and then you want to recommend that I read a children’s book about farm animals in order to “understand” the complex socio-eco-politcal phenomenon of ~70 years of Soviet rule. Kinda says it all, doesn’t it?

  151. 151.

    🐾BillinGlendaleCA

    @Yutsano: Also, capital and labor are compliments(though in some cases, such as automation capital can replace labor).  If you have five people having them dig with their hands to dig a hole is not that productive.   If you add a capitol input, say shovels, it increases their productivity.

  153. 153.

    Jay

    @Mnemosyne:

    because, other than “others” I am replying, ( 6 am start, so 30 minute hike, then bus, so 1:20 each way. )

    Yeah, single payer ain’t single payer. Private insurance, Employer based  or “Y’all have too much money” covers off the difference between basic medical care for like cancer, and vanity medical care, like calf implants.

  155. 155.

    anarchoRex

    @Baud: did I say they were?  If you were me, and I asked you this question, would you consider it a good faith reading of you response to me?

  162. 162.

    Baud

    @anarchoRex:

    Your comment:

    It would be pretty easy to imagine a world where all companies are employee ran and owned,

    My response:

    And unlike you, I have a great deal of difficulty imagining the world you describe as either being functional or less exploitative.

    Your response:

    worker owned companies perform better on average than the status quo, so that’s pretty easy to see working. And, Yutsano just helpfully pointed out a country that’s pretty damn close to what I’m talking about, so there’s really very little imagining that you have to do.

    Neat.

    I think I have read you fairly.

    As I understand it, Sweden is a capitalist country with strong worker and social protections.  Worth emulating, sure.  But people still exchange labor for compensation in a capitalists system there.

  163. 163.

    Mnemosyne

    @anarchoRex:

    Uh, if you think that George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” is a children’s book, it’s pretty clear you never bothered to read it.

    Hint: allegory =/= children’s book

  164. 164.

    anarchoRex

    @Mnemosyne: it was literally assigned to me in middle school. You sure like to assume a lot of personal details about the people you attempt to argue with, huh?

  167. 167.

    Mnemosyne

    @anarchoRex:

    I’m so embarrassed for your middle school right now. Did they just look at the title and assume it must be for kids because it has animals in it? Did your teacher discuss the allegory at all, or was it just a funny animal story right up until they started executing the dissenters?

  168. 168.

    anarchoRex

    @Baud: corporate boards in Sweden currently are required to fill 30% of their seats with representatives chosen by the workers. The govt of Sweden is like 3/5 of the gdp. Logistically, why’s it so hard to imagine that workers could move up to, say, 55% of the board and take majority control?

  170. 170.

    Baud

    @anarchoRex: Well, you’d still have capitalists in the system. Googling found this:

    Employees are represented on the boards of almost all companies with more than 25 employees (Sweden has a single-tier board system.) There are two or three employee members and they account for around one third of board members in most companies. They are chosen by the union and are generally the key figures in a whole range of employer-union relations.

    ….

    On most issues, board members representing employees have the same rights as those representing the shareholders of the company. However, they cannot take part in discussions relating to collective bargaining or industrial action, or other issues where there is a clear conflict of interest between the company and the union. Employee representatives have no power of veto and so cannot stop majority decisions taken against their wishes.

    So moving to majority-employee control of the board would be a seismic shift.

  172. 172.

    Mnemosyne

    @anarchoRex:

    Oh my god. You actually think “Animal Farm” is a children’s book because your school was run by idiots.

    I am never going to be able to stop laughing about this. This is one of the funniest claims I’ve ever seen someone make on here. Let me guess — “Oliver Twist” is a children’s book because you read that in middle school, too. 😂

  173. 173.

    Baud

    @anarchoRex:

    Because it would replace limited employee input with complete employee control.  If the company needs any kind of outside financing, that will be affected.  Also, the current requirement only applies to companies with 25 or more employees, so that means if a company grows the investor loses control of the company.  These things make a difference in the real world.

  176. 176.

    Mnemosyne

    @anarchoRex:

    That’s … that’s a review by an actual child, which is why it’s listed under “children’s books.” And the child obviously was not given any background on the book since he thinks it’s about humans vs animals.

    I mean, I can’t even imagine teaching that book without talking about the Soviet Union since the betrayal of the Bolshevik Revolution by Stalin is the entire point of the book. What the hell kind of school did you go to?

  177. 177.

    anarchoRex

    @Baud: but your looking at it as one company making an isolated shift. If it was economy-wide, then there’s no reason an employee-run bank wouldn’t finance an employee-run business, or provide the capital for a new employee-run business to get started.

    And most investors lose control of the companies they start. In fact, for most silicon valley outfits, that’s the goal. If an investor had a reasonable expectation that they could turn a profit on starting a company, even if they lose it once it grows past 25 employees (and there’s no reason that number can’t be raised or lowered) then they would still invest the capital.

    If your struggle is really “imagining” how these things could work, then you might want to exercise it more. If you just don’t think it could work, just say so.

  179. 179.

    Baud

    @anarchoRex: If it was economy-wide, then there’s no reason an employee-run bank wouldn’t finance an employee-run business, or provide the capital for a new employee-run business to get started.

    A bank, regardless of ownership, generally only cares about loans being paid back.  Most companies of any significant size are funded by issuing stocks and bonds to private investors, either on public exchanges or privately.  Many of these investors will want some control.

    And most investors lose control of the companies they start. In fact, for most silicon valley outfits, that’s the goal.

    That’s called a payout.  They voluntarily sell their companies for hard cash.  They don’t involuntarily cede control of their companies to employees for no cash.

    If an investor had a reasonable expectation that they could turn a profit on starting a company, even if they lose it once it grows past 25 employees (and there’s no reason that number can’t be raised or lowered) then they would still invest the capital.

    Some will, but as I mentioned above, most private investors want some control of the companies, rather than putting all their trust in the employees.

    If your struggle is really “imagining” how these things could work, then you might want to exercise it more. If you just don’t think it could work, just say so.

    I’m not going to put in extra work to make your ideas look more appealing.  I’ve already said upthread that I don’t think universal mandatory employee control of all businesses can work.

  180. 180.

    sukabi

    @Amir Khalid: don’t get it either Amir. Has been actor / comedian that has a sociopathic streak and a microphone.

    Not anyone I’d take advice of any kind from.

  181. 181.

    anarchoRex

    @Baud: I must’ve missed where you stated that. Fair enough, and since we’re kind of going round in circles at this point I’ll just thank you for the discussion. You can have the last word if you prefer, but either way I wish you goodnight.

  187. 187.

    Rivers

    As a middle school teacher,I’d like to point out that real literature with complex ideas is routinely assigned to 7th and 8th graders. You don’t need to have a thorough knowledge of Russian history to understand the point of Animal Farm. The allegory has a universal application and most older middle schoolers are perfectly capable of understanding it.

  188. 188.

    mrmoshpotato

    @anarchoRex: Bwhahahhahaha!!!!  Can you give us a link to which Animal Farm your middle school assigned, because we were assigned it too (7th or 8th grade) and had to write a research paper on it on how it was an allegory for the Russian Revolution.

    🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️

  189. 189.

    Chyron HR

    Can somebody briefly explain to me why Bernie is now telling his devout followers to yell at people about Animal Farm?

  192. 192.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Chyron HR: We decided to fight in a post called Friday Night Fights. :)

    (Seriously, read through.  To summarize would be like trying to skim Great Expectations.)

  193. 193.

    Gvg

    @Mnemosyne: Maybe the question is “how old are you?” Because, if he was in middle school after the fall of Soviet Russia, it ‘s possible for a school to still teach Animal Farm out of tradition but forget to teach the point of the book. Kids these days really aren’t learning the same stuff we older folk did.

    it’s also possible for kids to sometimes just miss a point. Some kids, just like adults, are more literal minded and everyone has days of distraction. Anyway, I paid attention to information about The USSR and China because of the threat of nuclear war. Times have changed. Anyone even 10 years younger probably wouldn’t have read Animal Farm the same way.

    i also grew up when Science Fiction and Fantasy was still not totally respectable but starting to get more common and popular. Most fiction was more “realistic”. Soon after fantasy became much more common. Animal Farm stood out more back when. Now I think it is much more possible to mistake it for something like a middle school Winnie the Pooh then what it really was…..savage political commentary.  My 5th grade nephew reads super hero’s, Pokémon and Harry Potter. I don’t think his age group reads anything about ordinary kids life. I read little house on the prairie, loads of horse stories, even detective fiction and sit coms were the normal television. Of course I preferred sci-fi when I could find it, but it wasn’t the majority of entertainment. I wonder if something like Animal Farm wouldn’t stand out now in the different literary landscape. Orwell might have written his story in such an unusual for the time way just to make it more conspicuous.

  194. 194.

    yellowdog

    @anarchoRex: The point is that if people are paid wages for their work under Bernie’s  whatever  it is system, they are still wage slaves by your definition. So Bernie  will do nothing to solve the problem.

  195. 195.

    jimmiraybob

    From everything that I’ve read and seen, D.J. Trump has been insanely consistent his whole life, also too.

    Con me once, shame on me

    Con me twice, shame on me

    Con me every day all day long, shame on me

  197. 197.

    Linda

    @Kent: I didn’t until all this came up. People are talking about Rogan like he is a huge influencer but a lot of people I know don’t know him either.linda

  200. 200.

    tam1MI

    @Mnemosyne: “You don’t want to be wage slaves, do you? Well, what makes you a wage slave? Wages! I want you to be free!”

    Groucho Marx was a god among men.

  201. 201.

    tam1MI

    @Mnemosyne: When I was in middle school, one of our assigned books was JOHNNY GOT HIS GUN, that, according to anarchoRex’s logic, is a fluffy child’s tale with nothing of any import to say.

  202. 202.

    tam1MI

    Can somebody briefly explain to me why Bernie is now telling his devout followers to yell at people about Animal Farm?

    To distract from Bernie’s own-goal with Joe Rogan.

  204. 204.

    Mnemosyne

    @Rivers:

    Yes, I agree, and that’s kind of my point. Calling something a “children’s book” because of the age you were when you read it in school is a serious misunderstanding of how curricula work. Middle schoolers read a lot of books that were written and intended for adults, so that’s why it was so bizarre to me that anarchoRex was assigned “Animal Farm” but his teacher apparently didn’t teach it as an allegory. That’s like teaching “The Scarlet Letter” and never discussing symbolism.

  205. 205.

    Heywood J.

    In a world where The View is still on the air, and CBS “News” literally hires one of Trump’s main lackeys as a common tater for the 2020 campaign, it’s very difficult to get worked up about someone like Joe Rogan. Compared to the establishment media ecosystem, he’s actually an improvement, which says much more about their parlous state than about him.

  206. 206.

    WaterGirl

    @Sab: This is sort of reminding me of the class Cole post from maybe a decade ago.  Someone was talking about how something was like rape.

    So Cole puts up a post that began with something like “You know what’s like rape, asshole?  Rape!”

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